[Bulli Bai App case] Accused Shweta Singh, Mayank Rawat remanded to police custody till January 10

A Mumbai court on Friday remanded Uttarakhand natives Shweta Singh and Mayank Rawat, accused in the BulliBai App case, to police custody till January 10, 2022.

. The two were detained from Uttarakhand on January 5, 2021 and were produced before the Metropolitan Magistrate Court at Bandra on January 7, 2021.

The prosecution alleged that 18-year-old Singh was active on social media and would post extreme content and had created a fake account on Twitter which was used to post contents on the application which is under investigation.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old Rawat, a student pursuing science graduation was arrested after the cyber cell tracked his phone which was used to share the posts. The police wanted to check his possible connections with extremist elements which may be involved in the case.

. The police stated that they wanted to corroborate the evidence they had collected from the first arrested accused Vishal Kumar , a 21-year-old student from Bangalore.

Kumar is in police custody since January 4.

. The case has its genesis in an app 'Bulli bai' which appeared on open source platform GitHub.

The app put out details of more than 100 prominent Muslim women allowing users to participate in an 'auction' of those women.

It triggered an outrage and based on complaints by women who had been targeted by the app, the cyber cell of Mumbai police registered an FIR on January 1, 2022.

The FIR was registered against relevant Twitter handles and developer of Bulli Bai for offences under Sections 153A (promoting enmity on grounds of religion etc), 153B (imputations prejudicial to national-integration), 295A (insulting religious beliefs), 354D (stalking), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), 500 (criminal defamation) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of Information Technology Act.

. Meanwhile, a Delhi court today also remanded Neeraj Bishnoi , the alleged “main conspirator” and creator of "Bulli Bai” on GitHub, to seven days of police custody.

The Delhi Police has registered a separate FIR in the matter.

[Bulli Bai App case] Accused Shweta Singh, Mayank Rawat remanded to police custody till January 10

Neha Joshi

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